Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to an electronic device for near field communication (NFC) including a processing unit including one or more applications and a controller for controlling NFC communication between a reader/writer device and the processing unit. The present disclosure relates further to a controller, a control method, an electronic system and a medium.
Description of Related Art
The NFC Forum, a non-profit industry association whose member organizations share development, application, and marketing expertise to develop the best possible solutions for advancing the use of NFC, has defined the NFC controller interface in “NFC CONTROLLER INTERFACE (NCI)”, Technical Specification, Version 1.1, Oct. 25, 2013, which describes different mechanisms to configure the NFC controller (NFCC) and to exchange data with the NFC controller and other entities within a device.
NCI defines how to handle the anti-collision for the Device Host (DH) in FeliCa™. In theory, it could also handle the anti-collision not only for the DH but also for other entities, e.g. the UICC (Universal Integrated Circuit Card; also called SIM). Today, the anti-collision for the UICC is handled by the UICC itself. The NFC Controller receives the anti-collision request, forwards this request to the UICC, the UICC generates a response (if required) and sends the response to the NFC Controller.
Security related FeliCa applications have an internal state which depends on whether the authentication with a reader/writer device succeeded or not. The default state (also called non-authenticated state herein) is “Mode 0”. Once the mutual authentication with the reader/writer device is done and the secure connection is established the application is in state “Mode 2” (also called authenticated state herein). An anti-collision request from a reader/writer shall only be handled in “Mode 0”. The “Mode 0” is left as soon as the first authentication command is received. In any other state the anti-collision request is ignored and nothing is sent to the reader/writer device.
The problem to be solved is that this behavior depends on the state of the corresponding application, which is running on the processing unit and not on the NFC controller. Hence, there is a need to provide a solution to enable the NFC controller to get information about the state of the application.
The “background” description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventor(s), to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly or impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.